


Dungeons and Dragons and Gay Panic

by oh_imintrouble



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Dungeons and Dragons, F/M, Gay Panic, High School, Idk how to tag anymore, Lance (Voltron) in Denial, Lance/Nyma are temporary, M/M, Past Keith/Shiro - Freeform, Pining Keith (Voltron), more tags to come
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-30
Updated: 2017-08-30
Packaged: 2018-12-21 16:48:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11948457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oh_imintrouble/pseuds/oh_imintrouble
Summary: First of all, Lance wasnota nerd. He was cool. Super cool. Like, he was probably the coolest guy he knew. What he did with his Friday nights didn’t matter, and wasn’t anyone’s business. If only Keith got the memo.





	Dungeons and Dragons and Gay Panic

**Author's Note:**

> "I'll wait until my other fic is finished to start a new one!"  
> I like how I seem to think I have any semblance of self control :^)  
> SO. Some things to know upfront: Keith is 18, Lance and Hunk are 17, Pidge is 15, Allura is 19, and Shiro is 20. Keith and Lance go to the same school while Hunk and Pidge go to a different school. I have everyone's characters figured out and I honestly might make up character sheets because I'm in REAL DEEP but I'll get more into those in the following chapters.  
> Hope you all enjoy and can join me in dnd hell *finger guns*

First of all, Lance was _not_ a nerd. He was cool. Super cool. Like, he was probably the coolest guy he knew. He got good grades, he was the captain of his high school swim team, he was gearing up to go to the top flight school in the country, and he had a super-hot girlfriend. What he did with his Friday nights didn’t matter, and wasn’t anyone’s business. It was between him and his troupe, what happened in Allura’s basement _stayed_ in Allura’s basement. If only Keith got the memo.

“Hey, when did you want to work on Damakos and Jack’s backstories? You wanted to get them more involved, didn’t you?”

Lance flushed, staring into his locker instead of looking at his friend. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said, suddenly absolutely fascinated by the photos taped to the inside of his locker.

Keith sighed, long and exaggerated, and leaned back against the locker beside his, his arms crossed over his chest. “Dude, c’mon, I want to hash everything out before Friday. I mean, yeah, it’s not hard to see how a rogue and a gunslinger can get along, but my tiefling hates elves, and I am _not_ rewriting a character’s history again just because you didn’t listen.”

He heard a couple girls whispering behind them, and hunched his shoulders, almost pushing himself closer to his locker. “Dude,” he said through gritted teeth.

“What?” Keith glared, his eyes narrowed and brows furrowed, and he would look damn angry if Lance didn’t know him so well. He almost always looked angry when he was confused, and seriously, he needed to work on that. Now that the baby fat was gone he just looked constantly on the verge of murder. At least he still had the braces to counteract his pissed off resting face.

“Can we not talk about this at school? I agreed to play with you guys again on the condition that we don’t talk about it outside of game night, remember?”

“I know, but-“

“No, no buts!” He said, practically slamming his locker door shut. He frowned when he noticed Keith’s eyes widen a fraction, and he sighed, dropping his head back. “Look, I have practice today and Thursday, and I have a date with Nyma Wednesday. If you want to do this before we play again, why don’t we just go home together Friday, plan everything out, then head to Allura’s together? We might have to watch the twins and Milo until Carmen gets home, but that’s the only free time I have this week. Cool?”

“Okay,” he agreed, the slight drop of his shoulders giving away his relief. “But wait, you’re ditching out on pie night again?” He asked, obviously disappointed but not surprised.

“Yeah dude, that’s kind of what happens when you have a girlfriend. I can’t be spending every free day I have with you chumps.” Lance nudged him with his elbow, the corner of his lips curling up in a crooked grin. “Besides, now you guys can talk all the shit you want on me. My only request is that you give Allura a bad pickup line in my honor.” He started down the hallway then, making his way to the art classroom on the opposite side of the school.

“So you admit that they’re bad?” Keith caught up to him, and pocketed his hands.

“Shut up.”

Around the end of Lance’s junior year, his life fell into a bit of a rut. It wasn’t that anything bad was happening per say, he was just so _bored_. Every week was the same; swimming Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, hanging out with Nyma Wednesdays and Fridays, and babysitting on the weekends. Sometimes he switched it up and went out to dinner with his friends on Wednesdays, but that was the only real shakeup in his life. Everything had gotten too predictable, and he was only seventeen. He was supposed to be having fun, living life, making the most of having no adult responsibilities, and he was bored.

Then his friends invited him to their game night. Keith had weirdly been against it, but Hunk and Pidge insisted it would be fun, would mix things up. So he agreed, and that next Friday he found himself in front of a massive, Victorian style home on the ritzy side of town. He met Allura and Keith’s neighbor Shiro—and honestly neither of them had any right being _that_ attractive—and for the first twenty minutes he just watched and honestly, kinda judged.

Because what level of nerd did you have to be to play dungeons and dragons? Did Hunk and Pidge really think he was so desperate for excitement he would take two steps down on the social ladder and start casting spells and shit? But _jesus_ did they get into it.

Once the game started, no one used their actual names—which by the way made remembering the two new people’s names damn near impossible. Pidge narrated the beginning to a new campaign, and they all sat with rapt attention, hanging onto their every word, until they were all given free rein to decide what they wanted to do.  They shared their theories on what Pidge had in store while they sat with an almost smug grin, giving away nothing no matter how hard the others pushed.

Keith was the one that lead them into a fictional battle, but if you saw the look on his face you would think it was real and not just words hanging in the air. They… all looked that way. They rolled their dice, and riffed off of each other, only breaking character to give one another shit for a bad roll or ask for snacks or strategize. And Lance could only watch, alone with his thoughts and ideas because he didn’t have a character or dice or whatever those sheets they all had were. Until they took a break so Hunk could use the bathroom.

“Bored?” Keith asked, leaning back in his chair to look at him while Shiro and Allura talked about class.

Lance shrugged, and quickly dropped his gaze to the carpet. “Y-yeah, uh… totally bored.”

Shiro chimed in then, giving Lance a friendly smile. “Do you want to play? We thought you wouldn’t want to since it can get kind of overwhelming, but you could use my old character if you want to join?”

Keith was flushed bright red for a reason Lance couldn’t quite pin, and he sat up straight. “But I thought you weren’t gonna try and bring Nikolai back since he died.”

He shrugged, crossing his arms on the table. “It’s no big deal if we do it just this once. Besides, I still have his character sheets so we wouldn’t have to break to get Lance set up with his own character and figure out all his stats.”

“Well no, but we’ll have to explain everything to him as he goes.”

“So? We did that for you when you joined.”

Keith’s blush spread to his ears, and he quickly crossed his arms over his chest, staring at the wall instead of at his friend. “ _I guess._ ”

Lance watched them go back and forth, before finally settling back on Shiro, looking almost hopeful as the man pulled a small packet of papers from the backpack he had with him.

“Okay, so, Nikolai is a fighter class, he’s a tank so he has a _ton_ of health, but hopefully Pidge is merciful and doesn’t target you since you’re new. His history doesn’t really matter much, so all you really need to know is he values action over talking, and he and Keith’s character Therai were married when he was alive so even though it’s usually a bad idea he always makes sure he’s safe.”

“Uh… married?”

Shiro laughed while Keith dropped his head to the table, arms crossed and one hand covering his head in shame. “You’d be surprised; a lot of things tend to just… happen when you play. Keith was still new so I kept trying to protect his character, and Matt called me out on it.”

“Yeah, that’s kind of what happens when someone doesn’t stop making googoo eyes at someone else,” Pidge piped in, smirking.

“I was being in character!” Keith snapped, knocking his fists on the table.

“What was being in character?” Hunk asked, walking downstairs with the boxes of pizza Allura’s uncle ordered for them.

“Keith being in love with Shiro.”

“Pidge!”

“And now he’s in love with Lance.”

“ _Pidge! Shut up!_ ”

Lance laughed with them while Keith made his way around the table holding up his middle fingers on both hands. It was all so fun and new and for the first time in forever Lance was truly excited to do something. So excited he had a full character sheet—complete with his own stats courtesy of Keith’s assistance—by the time next Friday came around.

That was six months ago, and since then almost every Friday night he was front and center for whatever Pidge wanted to throw at them. He picked it up like a natural, and even when he messed up or his character was knocked unconscious for half a fight, he still loved every second of it. He would always go home and update his mom who seemed equally excited that he was so passionate over something, and after several weeks of not knowing what her boyfriend was getting up to, finally told Nyma. She… was not as excited.

In fact, she laughed at him. Mercilessly. And teased him every chance she got. He actually stopped going for a couple weeks, but when he realized how miserable and left out he felt, he quickly picked it back up again. He just… didn’t tell her. And he would prefer to keep her in the dark if Keith could just keep his fat mouth shut. Because if that was how Nyma reacted, he didn’t want to know how his teammates or his strictly in-school friends would.

He sat in his usual spot at the back of the art classroom with Keith sitting beside him. Now, art had never been his best subject. He could take decent photos and do a killer cateye for his sister, but ask him to draw _anything_ and suddenly his hand forgot how to even hold a pencil. Keith on the other hand was stupidly talented. Not that he ever wanted to tell anybody that. He always seemed to tone down his ability whenever they got an assignment, which baffled Lance to no end. If he could draw even _half_ as well as Keith he would be using that to seduce the ladies left and right. But what did Keith use it for? Drawing portraits of his friends as gifts or drawing their DnD characters for commissions or just giving Lance things from stupid doodles to photo-realistic drawings he just thought he would like. Which he always did.

The teacher gave them a free draw period which Lance was always eternally grateful for and Keith loathed. And why? Because the teacher didn’t care if the class got a little rowdy as long as there were no complaints from neighboring teachers. And what did Lance do? Get rowdy and annoy the ever living fuck out of him.

“Do you want me to draw Jack and Damakos?” He asked, his cheek pillowed by his hand as he turned his head to look at him.

“Depends. How much are you charging me? You already got three of my allowances.”

“Don’t worry about it, I want to do it. But I need ideas on what to make them do.”

Lance thought long and hard, arms crossed over his chest as he tilted his chair back, his pencil held between his pursed lip and the bottom of his nose. Then he got it. “Remember how your character was knocked unconscious last time? And I said Jack was gonna put him in a baby bjorn to get him back to town?”

Keith stared at him a moment, blinking slowly, then took in a deep breath through his nose before dropping his head to their table with a fairly audible _thunk_.

“Kogane, you alright?!”

Lance was cackling, head thrown back and holding his stomach. He waved off his teacher's concern as Keith very gently continued to lift and drop his head again and again.

“Okay, okay,” Lance wheezed, one hand on the table and the other grabbing Keith’s shoulder. “Not that, I will never recover. Just… I dunno, you wanted them to be friends, right? They could be fighting side by side or just chilling and Jack could like have his head in his lap?”

“Nope, you brought this on yourself, I'm drawing the baby bjorn,” he said, pulling his phone out and immediately going to google for references.

For once Lance wasn’t abnormally distracting. He merely gave the occasional note or comment and at one point started doodling on Keith’s unoccupied arm in sharpie after pushing his hoodie sleeve up to his elbow. The one thing he could _kind of_ draw were flowers so he did a field on his forearm with some stars and the occasional dick for good measure.

When Keith finally stopped long enough to look at his handiwork he smiled. Until he saw the dicks. “Can't just leave things nice, can you?”

“Of course not.”

**Author's Note:**

> keeping this chapter short to kind of give an idea of what the rest of the work will be like, other chapters will be longer and have more dnd shenanigans  
> yes I gave Keith braces it's my favorite high school headcanon for my boy  
> and fun fact that baby bjorn thing 100% happened in a campaign I played with my friends because we don't know how to take things seriously  
> if you have any stupid dnd stories please share they're my favorite lol


End file.
